Student researcher Caitlin Wong
After completing her second year of the joint UBC- BCIT Biotechnology’s Honours degree program this past summer, Caitlin Wong joined BCIT’s Natural Health and Food Product Research Group (NRG) as a cooperative education student.
With an interest in applying the skills she acquired during her first two years of the program, Caitlin contributed to an ongoing research project aimed at identifying new and/or practical compounds in the male inflorescences of the fruit Artocapus altilis, commonly known as breadfruit.
The project is a collaborative effort between the National Tropical Botanical Garden, University of British Columbia Okanagan and NRG. Past work has shown that certain breadfruit compounds are more effective at deterring mosquitoes than commonly used DEET-based repellents.
One of the difficulties in identifying these compounds is creating reliable analytical methods. Under the guidance of Dr. Paula Brown, Canada Research Chair in Phytoanalytics and NRG researcher Dr. Xiaohui Zhang, Caitlin helped to develop analytical methodology to facilitate the identification of sample constituents.
“Working with NRG provided me with great insight into the inner workings of an academic research group that also collaborates with industrial companies by allowing me to witness intercompany and interdepartmental relations,” says Caitlin.
Caitlin is starting her third year this September at BCIT before heading to UBC to complete the final two years of the program.
“It is great to be able to see how theoretical chemistry can be applied to develop different products,” says Caitlin. “I was also able to extend my knowledge of analytical chemistry techniques and work with equipment such as gas chromatography mass spectrometry and high-performance liquid chromatography instrumentation and analyze the results using their accompanied software.”
Caitlin was successful in receiving financial support through an NSERC USRA award (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada – Undergraduate Student Research Award).
Instrumentation used in the project was provided by Western Economic Diversification.
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